


Where I Lay My Head Is Home

by jerseydevious



Series: CEC Shorts [2]
Category: Batman (Comics)
Genre: Gen, dev brings him chocolate icing, post-dinosaur amputation bruce is kind of sad
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-26
Updated: 2019-03-26
Packaged: 2019-12-18 05:00:27
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,405
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18242879
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jerseydevious/pseuds/jerseydevious
Summary: Someone needs to get Bruce fighting again.





	Where I Lay My Head Is Home

**Author's Note:**

  * For [audreycritter](https://archiveofourown.org/users/audreycritter/gifts).



> Tor-dah. Here it is, @audreycritter let me have her son again.

“Alfie said he’s had this icing in the fridge for nearly a week and you haven’t eaten a bite.”

 

_ Bite.  _ Bruce let his head fall to the side, staring unblinkingly at Dev. Dev stood in the doorway, hair ruffled, presumably from the wind and rain pounding against the French doors on the other side of the room. He wasn’t wearing a coat, either, just a sweater vest over a shirt Bruce recognized as Dev’s favorite Mass Effect shirt. It was easy to spot because there was a barbecue sauce stain on the collar, from a dinner Clark had brought up from Kansas—the three of them, sitting around a microwaved plate of ribs and corn and mashed potatoes, passing a bottle of rum. The lower the line, the more barbecue sauce in Dev’s beard, and then a dollop on the collar of his shirt.  _ Sod it all, Kent, you’ve a walking miracle for a friend, if you’d any idea what that brain looked like—I do. I’ve seen it—SODDING FUCK WE COULD’VE BEEN HAVING THIS CONVERSATION EARLIER—Please stop talking about the inside of my brain. _

 

It was a good memory. 

 

Dev was still staring at him. “You look like shite,” he said, at last. He screwed the top off the jar of icing, stuck the spoon into it, and dropped it on Bruce’s bedside table. “Sodding eat it, you prick. Doctor’s orders.”

 

“No—” Bruce’s voice was thin and weak from not speaking, and it died, fizzling in his throat with a final fatal buzz. 

 

Dev looked down his nose, down at Bruce, where he was sprawled on the bed and hadn’t moved an inch for four hours. Or was it four days? Everyone everywhere knew what time it was and Bruce alone seemed to live inside a glacier. “Try again,” he said, sternly, and it was the  _ quiet-patient-intent _ voice Dev used when Bruce was nearing some breaking point or another. Breaking points—he was full of them, a field of broken glass, and now he wore one in place of his arm. The empty space twisted, throbbed. Empty space and breaking points.    
  
“No,” Bruce whispered, “doctor… would.” He stopped, because he’d forgotten the rest of what he was going to say.

 

A hand cupped his cheek, a rough thumb stroking his cheekbone. “You’re in a bloody state, Wayne,” he said, softly. Soft. The eyes that were looking at him now were dark and soft and Bruce wished that they were filled with hate because that would be safer than the hand holding his face, the one that took Bruce biting through the meat of his cheek to force himself not to lean into. 

 

Bruce let his eyes shut. He was ready to be away—to dream, even if they were bad dreams, to be out of this broken body and into one that wasn’t chained to this bed, into one that didn’t twist and tie and deep fry his nerves with a limb that wasn’t even there. He was ready, to sleep through a night with waking up already in tears because muscles and bones should not ache like that, because they shouldn’t _ —hurt _ that bad. He was ready for fields of flowers and sunlight, he was ready for—he wanted—he wanted—he wanted his goddamn city back. Bruce opened his eyes. Dev had gone while Bruce’s eyes had been closed, and Bruce felt the bitter, vicious twist of it, not unlike teeth; of course a doctor could recognize poison when he saw it. 

 

Then Dev came out of the bathroom, holding a damp washcloth, sweeping Bruce’s face with it.  _ Right state— _ Bruce had forgotten, that he was still caked with sweat and tears and crusted vomit from nights spent throwing up because the ache, the ache that wouldn’t go away. And when Alfred had approached him, Bruce had flinched.  _ Don’t touch me, don’t touch me, I’m broken don’t touch me it’s poisonous,  _ he’d been thinking. Saying? Tears slipped out of the corners of Bruce’s eyes and briefly, he wondered where in the hell all of his self-control had gone, where the hell all of his strength had gone.

 

After he was done gently scrubbing in circular motions, Dev wiped off Bruce’s face with a dry towel. He swiped at the new tears with the corner. “How bad’s the pain?”

 

Bruce flexed his free hand, and raised it, fingers splayed. It was shaking. He was always shaking, now. 

 

“Five. Your tolerance is high as shite, why’d I even ask.” Dev’s hand wrapped around Bruce’s, and squeezed. 

 

“Going to hurt you,” Bruce rasped, without thinking. Maybe there were words he’d been saying, rather than thinking—he couldn’t remember. But he could remember the look on Alfred’s face, like he’d been shot in the gut. 

 

“Wayne, I—I know when arseholes are going to sodding hurt me,” Dev said, gravely. His eyes were soft. It was a wonder that he was saying the words that he was, a quiet marvel. “Call it a skill. Call it—call it—whatever you want. But it’s sodding not you. You’ve hurt  _ yourself.” _

 

Dev flipped over the blanket, underneath which Bruce was shirtless because the last time he had seen the dangling length of sleeve with no arm to fill it he’d thrown up, and dragged his finger around a swath of scabbing marks on the shoulder of his missing arm. Scratches, peeling back layers and layers of scar tissue. 

 

“Alfie rang, and I’ve some cream for these,” Dev said. “But it stops.”

 

Bruce’s eyes slipped shut. “Yes,” he said, and his voice was stronger, but still thready. 

 

Fingers worked through his hair. “That’s the ticket,” Dev said, absently, but there was something odd in his voice, so Bruce looked at him. Dev’s brows had pinched together, and he looked almost as if he were about to cry. 

 

“What’s,” Bruce choked out. After a minute, he said, finally, “Wrong.”

 

Dev wiped his eyes with the collar of his shirt. “Sodding hell,” he said. “Embarrassed, Wayne. I thought you’d be  _ embarrassed.” _

 

“You’ve… already seen,” Bruce said, and when his voice gave out, his brain filled in  _ scars like that on me. _ There wasn’t a scar on his skin Dev hadn’t seen. 

 

“And you’re always sodding embarrassed. But you don’t sodding care, and that’s a sodding big problem,” Dev said. “You’ve had a hellish week. You’ve a better one ahead.”

 

“How.”

Dev jumped over him, bouncing on the bed where he landed. “First up, you’re going to eat all of that. Next up, you’re taking a shower. Then you’re not to be left alone. If you sodding yell at someone to chase them away I’ll sodding yell over you about sodding nonsense, understand? And when you’re the bloody Batman again your sutures will be Superman colors.” 

 

Bruce sat up, sharply. He ignored the way the world seemed to tilt, the way he only had a single arm to push himself off the bed. “You think I could do it again,” Bruce said. “You—you think I could be Batman again.”

 

Dev’s eyes were wide, flicking over Bruce’s face. He seemed to be fascinated by whatever he saw there. “Of sodding course, mate.”

 

Bruce leaned back against the headboard. “How soon,” he said, flatly. His voice held steady. 

 

“Start with finishing the icing, Wayne.” 

 

Bruce leaned forward and reached for it. He held the jar between his legs and jabbed the spoon in. 

 

Dev watched him as he ate—Bruce occasionally stole glances at him, but the mystified expression on Dev’s face didn’t disappear. 

 

“What,” Bruce said, around a mouthful of icing, “is that look for.”

 

Dev waited until Bruce had finished off the chocolate icing, and had settled back down. “I won’t pretend to understand the long sodding lengths you go to, to protect your identity. I’m bloody certain there’s shite you do I’ll never even think of, to protect your identity. But the one thing I don’t get is how no one noticed you make people feel sodding safe.” 

 

Bruce looked at him, feeling dumb, wondering what it was he’d done. But Dev didn’t elaborate immediately, only curled and rested his head on Bruce’s chest. Damnable man. 

 

Eventually, when Bruce was half asleep, Dev said, quietly, “I’m glad you’ve… come back. I don’t know if there’s… a sodding word for it, but this? This is home to me.”

“Brothers,” Bruce grunted.

 

“What?”

 

“The word.”

 

And then Bruce was asleep. 

**Author's Note:**

> You'd think the title is from a hippie feelings song but it's actually a Metallica song


End file.
